August EV Sales Higher For US, But You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

Chevrolet Bolt EV sales crossed the 2,000-level for the first time in August…can the 238 mile EV hit the 3,000s by year end?

Sales of plug-in vehicles in the US continue to show strong growth in 2017…and we haven’t even gotten to the “good part” yet.

For August, some 16,623 plug-in vehicle deliveries were made, an improvement of almost 15% over the ~14,592 sold a year ago.

In fact, last month marks the 23rd consecutive month* of record gains in the US market for plug-ins, and as mentioned this is the “low point” of the growth curve for America moving forward. For 2017 YTD, ~121,501 plug-ins have been moved, up 31% from 2016 (~92,211 sales).

Tesla Model 3 – show here being accessed remotely via mobile app- looks to re-write the EV sales record books at year’s end

While a handful more of Tesla model 3s went out in August, expectations are for some pretty lofty returns on the latest Tesla in Q4 – perhaps upwards of 25,000 copies.

Add in the soon-to-arrive deeper inventory of the Toyota Prius Prime with the 2018 model year’s debut in a month’s time, the Chevrolet Bolt EV just going national in the last week or so, the newly re-designed/longer range Nissan LEAF (full details here) arriving in December …and the typical year-end EV sales spike – thanks to how the $7,500 federal credit works, and we’d be shocked to not see 100,000+ plug-ins be sold in the last 4 month’s of the year.

Getting back to the “here and now”, three offerings all sold around 2,000 copies in August to move the needle higher in the US: the Tesla Model S, Chevrolet Bolt EV, and the Toyota Prius Prime.

Interestingly all of the top 3 sellers in the US for August are expected to put up big gains in September. As noted the Bolt EV deepens its nation-wide advance, the Prius Prime’s inventory doubled in the last weeks of August, and there is an almost unprecedented amount of US Model S customer order in Tesla’s production queue. In other words, if you are betting on EV sales for September – take the over!.

Also of note for August EV sales:

The Tesla Model S widened its lead for the US sales lead in the month, as the Chevy Volt seems to be having some trouble this Summer competing against its stablemate Bolt EV. GM made 4,708 Volt sales over the past 3 months vs 6,424 a year ago…bringing the YTD comparisons into the red this month for the first time in 2017

the BMW i3 continues to flounder in the US, sales were 50% lower in August than a year ago. Perhaps the introduction of a new, sportier i3s edition (details) will help sales somewhat (although we tend to think that a price cut and adding some range would be the more obvious choice to help sales rebound)

smart, despite losing 2/3rds of its US dealers for the 2017 model year as the petrol versions fade out, the new 2017 smart Electric Drive arrived in August, selling almost 3 digits worth of the re-designed city car. As for the loss of all those dealers? It really doesn’t effect smart ED sales, as the bulk of the monthly EV totals have always been from the remaining 1/3

Other Statistical Points of Interest from August 2017

Yupe, the Volvo XC60 Plug-In Hybrid has arrived in the US (albeit in limited numbers so far)

Top Manufacturers Of Plug-In Vehicles:

Tesla* – 3,800

General Motors – 3,576

Toyota – 1,820

BMW Group – 1,729

Ford – 1,598

Nissan – 1,154

VW Group – 625

Daimler – 419

Pure Electric Car Market Share vs PHEV In August*

BEV – 8,743– 52.6%

PHEV – 7,881 -47.4%

(*) estimated

New Year Highs Set In August By Model (previous 2017 high in brackets)

Chevrolet Bolt EV – 2,107 (1,971)

BMW 530e – 345 (343)

Kia Soul EV – 300 (171)

Volvo Xc90 T8 PHEV – 265 (202)

Kia Optima PHEV – 182 (130)

Mercedes C 350 3 – 212 (210)

smart Electric Drive – 94 (22)

Mini Countryman PHV – 86 (75)

Tesla Model 3* – 75 (30)

Volvo SC60 PHEV – 65 (13)

Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid– 23 (22)

The full monthly recap by individual plug-in (all-time) can be found on our Monthly Scorecard here.

*On year of monthly sales improvements: We know someone is going to look at the chart and say, “hey, only ~11,467 sales were made in May of 2016, when 11,540 were logged in 2015! What gives InsideEVs?” What gives is – through an odd scheduling quirk, only 24 selling days were reported in May 2016 (versus 26 in 2015)

For Jay Cole:
Jay, would it be possible going forward to include the overall EV marketshare in the monthly scorecard as well (once numbers are final)?
IMO that’s also a very interesting indicator, no less than the absolute EV sales numbers.

Prime would be higher if it weren’t totally inventory constrained in the USA. Japan’s taking a big chunk of the inventory. Of course, Toyota will prefer to sell in Japan so they have a reasonable profit margin.

Aside: a local dealer actually sent me a flyer about the Gen 4 Prius. Not the Prime, but still better than receiving junk about the Camry or RAV4, which is what I usually get.

I’ll never understand why anyone would buy a Prius over a Volt. My gen2 Volt is a blast to drive and even pretty good on twisty back roads, it’s quiet, and it looks sexy.

If I drive normally I get at least 60 miles range on non-expressway roads. If I use Hold on an expressway I still get over 40 mpg unless I’m in a hurry and going 80mph.

Despite living an a rural area where I need to use the range extender for most drives, my overall MPGe DESTROYS anything I could get from Toyota.

What I like most is that I can decide whether I want to drive for economy, for arrival time, or for sport. The Volt never feels like an economy car even when I drive for economy, it’s that freakin’ awesome!

And I suspect there are still some (Many?) Who hate GM for exiting EV’s, Selling off the NiMH tech to Big Oil, and Crushing EV1’s!

I bought GM in 2005, my first new car, since having big financial troubles of my own, but moved from that through to 2 other OEM’s products since, all non GM. For one, I could not get that my 1981 Chevy Citation Had 12,000 Kms service intervals, and a 2005 Optra had 5,000 Kms Service Intervals!

However, versus EV’s and keeping Dealers in business, it now makes more sense!

But no two people are likely to agree, Rob, on what weight to give the various objective criteria.

But more than that, very few people choose a car based solely on objective criteria. Subjective factors — which car someone “likes” or doesn’t — probably have more influence over which cars individuals choose than objective or logical criteria.

If everybody made a buying choice based solely on objective criteria, then there would only be a few models of cars and light trucks on the market, rather than hundreds.

The Volt would be even better for those who have only a 20 mile commute every day. I’ve met a few Volt owners with such commutes (or even shorter) and some don’t even know what it’s like to drive with the range extender on.

I will add the caveat that I haven’t driven a Prius in a couple years. Maybe they’ve improved. But the last one I drove was just an economy car. Nothing wrong with economy cars, my last car was an economy car and it served me well.

Here’s the difference in my mind: an economy car is like a toaster. It’s an appliance. My Volt? I look for excuses to drive it. Nobody looks for excuses to use a toaster.

Very encouraging trend. The launch of model 3 will help with the sale of other EVs. Once people realize they cant have one of those today they will explore alternatives. look for sales of bolt volt n leaf closely.

I think everyone understands there’s a long way to go. However a decade ago this site probably wouldn’t be here, and we’d be talking about single digit EV, or low double digit EV sales in the whole country (mostly conversions).

Fairly anemic growth over last August, but I agree signs point to a big jump in September, sustaining through the end of the year as Model 3, Prime and Bolt sales surge above last year’s levels.

As we finally have nationwide availability and inventory of the Prime and the Bolt that’s going to help a lot.

December is going to be really interesting as people grab the tax credit and Model 3 ships in serious volume. There were ~24,800 sales in December last year. What are the chances we can double that number? I think it’s doable as we might see 10,000+ sales of Model 3 alone if things go well for Tesla.

Haven’t looked at these numbers in a while. If the Model 3 hits Elon’s tweeted ramp, in September, the Model 3 should beat the LEAF and challenge the Model X and Volt and then shortly afterwards, beat the pants off everyone else.

Expect sales to lag production by some time period as cars go through quality control, so even if Tesla does meet Musk’s projection of 1,500 Model S built in September, many of those will be built in the latter 2 weeks of the month and will not make it into customers hands until a later month.

As a rule, Tesla does not release monthly sales totals. I absolutely would not expect Tesla to end that practice anytime soon. We got July numbers only because it was part of their new product release event.

I’m pretty disappointed in how poorly charging infrastructure is keeping up with EV sales. In the Midwest fast charging in the cities is pretty but traveling between cities is challenging. I had to make several L2 charging stops traveling between DFW and Austin this last weekend and I met a Bolt EV owner that diverted to Austin traveling from DFW to Houston because of the lack of CCS on the direct route.

I have been complaining about the lack of CCS between Dallas and Houston for years.

The distance between the cities means that it is just barely beyond the range of the Bolt without hypermiling. There aren’t even any L2 stations! A Clipper creek 14-50 charger at an RV park might be quicker than diverting through Austin though.

The good news is that several charging stations are supposed to be installed as part of the VW plan. Bad news is installation is over a year away.

Several of the charging operators have an option to have people recommend a location for installation, might be good to hit one of them up. This is where a national chain like Starbucks or McDonald’s would really set themselves apart by installing charging infrastructure at their storefronts.

Genius! Oh man maybe Subway would be a good one to do that… I don’t know any stats but I bet EV owners as a whole don’t eat at McDonald’s/BK as much. Too bad there aren’t Chipotle’s at most highway exits.

Finally saw a Bolt in person up in the Great White North of Canada (Eastern Ontario). Guess, two actually, over the past weekend. That 30,000 unit per year plan for the Bolt seems attainable if they are serving the entire North American market.

No inventory, it is pretty well documented that Hyundai way undershot this EV.

The demand is off the chart in South Korea, they are planning to ramp 2018 production to supply ~900 a month for home (South Korea)/900 for RoW (rest of world) – which is still way too low, but the most they can bump it too for now.

For 2017, they only targeted something like 8,000 cars, and moved more than 6k through May domestically alone. When will the US get depth? Who knows. Probably not until sometime after the longer range version debuts in a year or so.

Will like be same story with Kona/Niro, production was pegged at something like 25k for first year’s run.

Don, is right. The EV manufacturers are banking profits while they can while the credit lasts. You can find all sorts of articles saying EV so and so is losing money on each sale but the smart money seems to indicate that the top 8 or 10 EVs in the US are making a decent amount of money per sale. They will easily be able to drop the price $3750 when the tax credit gets cut in half, and in fact, doing so will probably cause sales to go up since the perceived price will seem to drop for a lot of less informed car buyers. Seeing Volts MSRP at $29,500 and Bolt MSRP at $33,900 will help GM a great deal. Tesla may not need to drop their prices by the full $3750 because they have the cachet. Ford won’t be impacted since their packs are so small they don’t qualify for the full credit anyway. Nissans price could drop way below $30k for the 150 mile version and the 200+ version coming out next year could be around $30k.
The credit getting cut in half will be a plus for the EV makers in the long run. There may be a slight hiccup when the credit goes away entirely, but given the rate of price improvements on packs and electric intent parts, it wont hurt for long.

what is your estimate for model 3 sales. If you look the production curve and take it at face value it appears tesla can produce about 30,000 model 3’s before the end of the year. Is that possible. any thoughts on lag between production and sale?